1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to containers for liquid material, particularly, to containers with pouring spouts for dispensing liquids from the container in an inverted position into a receiving tank.
2. Description of Prior Art
The efficient delivery of oil to the inlet of a vehicle's engine is difficult to achieve in practice, in view of the complexity of automobile engines which often have poorly-accesible oil inlets. Thus, it is difficult to avoid spilling or dripping of oil onto adjacent engine parts and the ground; this mars engines' appearance and contaminates the environment.
Most often the engine's oil sump is filled with oil by using an oil container with a removable threaded cover. The oil is poured into the engine through an oil-filling port directly or via a funnel. A user holds the funnel in one hand and the oil container in another hand. Because of its high viscosity and the need to let air into the container, the oil flows slowly and in spurts. Since the funnel blocks the flow of air to the oil tank, the user often raises the funnel to form an air gap between the funnel and the oil inlet hole of the engine.
Upon completion of the oil pouring operation, three dirty, oily parts remain, i.e., a funnel which has to be kept in the car trunk, an empty oil container, and a threaded cover. The funnel must be cleaned and wiped, while the container and its cover must be discarded.
The pouring operation described above is inconvenient, requires two-hands, leaves the user with dirty hands, causes splashing of oil, and is disadvantageous from the environmental point of view.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,979,655, issued December 1990 to D. Gallucci, describes a pouring spout which is screwed onto a threaded neck of an oil container for pouring in an inverted position. The spout has a tubular shape, one end of which is connected to the oil container and the other of which has a dispensing opening and a closure sleeve. The closure sleeve is slidingly moveable between a first position, in which the dispensing opening is blocked, and a second position, in which the dispensing opening is open.
Since the closure sleeve is slidingly fitted onto the tube, the connection between the closure sleeve and the tube is not sealed against leakage of oil.
The assembly of a container with the pouring spout consists of three separate parts, i.e., the container, the tubular portion, and the closure sleeve. The pouring spout is complicated in structure, expensive to manufacture, and the presence of a long tubular portion increases the length of the spout as a whole.
The same patent discloses another embodiment in which the closure sleeve and the tube have a bayonet joint in the form of a pin, pressed into the tube, and an angular slot, formed in the closure sleeve. This embodiment requires an additional assembly operation of pressing the pin into the tube.